XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Saturday, 23 January 2016

35 China restaurants under probe for seasoning food with Opium Poppies - to get customers addicted -

Five restaurant owners are being prosecuted, and 25 are under criminal investigation, according to the Chinese Drug and Food Administration.

Opium poppy capsules and powders have been banned in China since 2013.

Adding the powder to dishes is said to add flavor, just like MSG or other food additives used in Chinese cooking.

So, what were these owners thinking? Poppy products like powders can cause individuals to fail drug tests and, in large amounts, get addicted. It's not clear if these owners were trying to get customers addicted.

However, one restaurant owner used the substance in his food to get customers hooked in 2014. The owner was later arrested, according to local media.

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Study finds scented candles may release a dangerous cocktail of cancer-causing agents -

The cost of using scented candles to keep your house smelling fresh could be much higher than just the price tag on those expensive Yankee Candles.

A professor at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science teamed up with the BBC Two series "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor" to measure levels of "volatile organic chemicals" making their way through six houses in the English city of York over five days.

Researchers asked each resident to write down any scented candles, air fresheners and cleaning products they used and how often, and then tested the air in each home.

The team says the chemical it found the most of was limonene, a substance used to give products that citrus smell. The homes that used the most scented candles and cleaning products also had the highest levels of that chemical.

Now, limonene itself isn't particularly dangerous, but when it's released into the air, it reacts with ozone to create formaldehyde -- yes, the same formaldehyde used in embalming.

And that's definitely not good, considering the National Cancer Institute has said formaldehyde is associated with several types of cancer.

Fortunately, the researchers say you can control the amount of limonene in the air by using fewer scented products and opting for fragrance-free cleaning agents.

Judging by the risk-to-reward ratio here, it might be best to do that.

Read more -

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/19/study-finds-scented-candles-may-release-a-dangerous-cocktail-of-cancer/21299523/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000058&intcmp=hplnws

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Hundreds of tiny spiders, lice and more crawling through US homes, study says - 579 types of arthropods in 50 houses -

If you’re ever feeling lonely at home, you can now rest assured that you are far from alone. The average home is crawling with more than 100 species of invertebrates, such as spiders, lice and centipedes, according to research conducted by US scientists.

In what’s thought to be the first study to quantify exactly what is scurrying or flying around the standard American home, researchers scoured 50 houses and found they were inhabited by 579 different types of arthropods, as well as humans. Arthropods are invertebrate animals with segmented bodies and jointed limbs, such as insects and spiders.

The homes, on average, each had around 100 arthropod species. The most commonly found species were flies, spiders, beetles, ants and book lice. Cobweb-producing spiders were found in 65% of the homes.

Matthew Bertone, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, said he was amazed at the variety of species found in what he stressed were “clean and normal” homes in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“We were pretty surprised with what we found, such as the smallest wasp in the world, which is just 1mm long,” he said. “I saw a lot of things in homes that I had never seen in the wild before, things we’ve previously tried to trap. There is a weird species of beetle, called telephone pole beetles, where the babies can produce babies. And tiny crickets called ant-loving ants because they are found near ant nests. I’ve never seen one of those before.”

A team of entomologists found the species just by looking from floor to ceiling in each room, without prying open drawers or ripping up carpets. In one home, the presence of several flesh flies led to the discovery of a rotting rodent carcass killed by a pet cat.

The houses picked for the research were detached homes measuring up to 5,000 square feet in size. Apartments were ruled out for the research due to the shared bugs within apartment buildings.

Many of the small animals found in homes come in from outside and promptly die, while others live the life of predators.

“There are lots of cobweb spiders and also the house centipede, which is a really creepy looking creature to some people but I find them fascinating,” said Bertone. “They are very fast and if you’re a cockroach, you’re likely to be on their menu. Most of these things aren’t pests, they peacefully co-habit with people.

“I never thought I’d see such biology in homes that were clean, not filled with junk, just normal homes. My hope is that this doesn’t freak people out but people need to know their houses aren’t sterile environments.”

The research, led by Bertone with the aid of the California Academy of Sciences and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, was published in the journal PeerJ. The entomologists hope to build upon the research by learning more about the role that each species plays in the home and the significance of living so closely to them.

Read more -

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/19/american-homes-arthopods-spiders-lice-new-research

10% of U.S. College Graduates think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court of the United States -

Nearly 10% of college graduates surveyed in a poll believe Judith Sheindlin, aka "Judge Judy," serves on the Supreme Court.

Sheindlin is an American lawyer made popular as the judge on a court show by the name of "Judge Judy." The show features Sheindlin handling small disputes in a courtroom, but Sheindlin does not serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The poll, conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in August 2015 but released in January 2016, concluded from the 1,000 surveyed that college graduates "are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage."

The survey also found 28.4% of college graduates correctly identify the father of the Constitution as James Madison. About 59% of college students surveyed believe the father of the Constitution was Thomas Jefferson, who was actually the principal writer for the Declaration of Independence.

It also found that almost 60% of college graduates couldn't correctly identify a requirement for ratifying a constitutional amendment and 40% of college graduates didn't know that Congress has the power to declare war.

Additionally, the poll revealed that less than 50% of college graduates surveyed know that presidential impeachments are tried before the U.S. Senate.

Read more -

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/19/politics/judge-judy-supreme-court-poll/index.html

Study: Expensive Hotels Have More Germs -

Think that fancy five-star hotel you just booked is cleaner than others? According to a new study, think again.

The new study titled “Hotel Hygiene Exposed” finds that the average hotel room has more bacteria than a typical home, airplane, or school.

“We’re definitely not trying to scare anyone,” project manager for Travelmath told Yahoo Travel.

Travelmath used teams of researchers armed with cotton swabs, and plastic bags to test rooms in nine different hotels.

They say they tested three-star, four-star, and even five-star hotels in a variety of locations for the study.

Their results show that all the hotel rooms had a lot of bacteria, and the four-star and five-star hotels actually tended to be dirtier than the less luxurious three-star hotels.

In the Travelmath study, each team swabbed the same four surfaces in each hotel room, the bathroom counter, the remote control, the desk, and the phone.

Read more -

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2016/01/19/study-expensive-hotels-have-more-germs/

Monday, 18 January 2016

Cosmic first: Zinnia flower blooms aboard space station -

Successfully growing flowers in space brings explorers one step closer to growing fresh produce on long space missions.

For the first time, a zinnia flower has bloomed in space, aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Successfully growing flowers brings cosmic explorers closer to growing flowering food crops, like tomatoes, on longer space missions in the future.

On Saturday, American astronaut Scott Kelly, who has been working since March 2015 on the space laboratory and has become its resident gardner, gleefully announced on Twitter that he successfully coaxed the brightly colored zinnia to blossom.

This wasn’t the first time flowering plants have blossomed in space, though. There have been many, according to NASA, from wheat, to barley, to brassicas and peas, grown more than a decade ago on the Russian Mir space station and on the ISS.

Recommended: Five groups making private space flight a reality
Regardless, the zinnia bloom was a big accomplishment, as less than a month ago, the plants were moldy and shriveled.

But even the space mold held some interest to researchers, so it was collected and frozen so it can be returned to Earth for study.

For NASA scientists back on Earth, the flowering experiment, called “Veggie,” will allow them to better understand how plants grow in microgravity. For the astronauts in space, growing the quick-sprouting zinnias is important practice for growing produce on a future mission to Mars.

“I think having this fresh food source available is going to be critical,” Gioia Massa, a project scientist at NASA Kennedy Space Center and the brainchild behind Veggie, told The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview in November.

Astronauts eat mostly food that has been freeze-dried for long storage. Fresh fruits and vegetables do show up occasionally at the space station with other supply deliveries, but they run out quickly.

"The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits," Massa said in a NASA announcement.

Astronauts started experimenting with Veggie in 2014, when they grew red romaine lettuce in the same system that’s now growing the zinnias: trays of water with bags of seeds in a type of calcined clay used on baseball fields, used to increase aeration to help the plants grow. The growing plants are lit by LED lights and fertilized by an automatic release.

The first batch of lettuce didn’t grow due to “drought stress,” as the Veggie team reported. But astronauts learned from their watering mistakes and grew another batch of lettuce successfully in summer 2015. Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren of NASA, with Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, celebrated in August by indulging in their freshly harvested space lettuce.

The lettuce experiment was an important precursor to the flowering zinnia, which is more challenging to cultivate.

“The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce,” said Trent Smith, Veggie project manager, in a NASA blog post.

“It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration, between 60 and 80 days. Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant,” he said.

Astronauts are planning to try growing tomatoes in 2018.

Until then, they will keep experimenting with other crops. This year a SpaceX spacecraft will deliver seeds for two sets of Chinese cabbage, and one set of red romaine lettuce, said NASA.

Read more -

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0117/Cosmic-first-Zinnia-flower-blooms-aboard-space-station

El Chapo's craving for Tacos may have led to his capture - doomed by a suspiciously large taco order -

Actor and just all-around enigma Sean Penn might not have lead to the downfall of Joaquín Guzmán Loera (a.k.a El Chapo). Instead, it might have been his craving for tacos. The notorious Mexican drug kingpin was recently captured after escaping prison and leading local authorities on a six-month country-wide man hunt. According to the New York Times, after months hiding out in the “remote wilds,” he arrived in the city of Los Mochis to a home. However, the authorities had trailed one of the men who had helped Guzmán escape prison to the area.

The Mexican marines were already suspicious of the house where “construction crews had been hard at work” and telephone intercepts appeared to show that someone “big was about to arrive.” It was a very, very large taco order, however, that officially tipped authorities off that El Chapo was in town. Two blocks away from the house, a “big order of tacos was picked up after midnight… by a man driving a white van, like the one believed to be driven by” one of Guzmán’s associates. The next morning they raided the house.

There’s no details regarding what kinds of tacos El Chapo went H.A.M. on, but perhaps it was one of these regional specialities. Regardless, can you really blame the man? Tacos might be one of a handful of foods that taste better than freedom. If you need some convincing, here’s a good list of tacos to start with.

Read more -

http://firstwefeast.com/eat/el-chapo-tacos-lead-to-capture/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=First%20We%20Feast%20-%20Daily%202016-01-18&utm_term=Daily

The FBI and Memphis Police Admit Their Involvement in the Assassination of MLK -

Nearly 50 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI and Memphis Police Department have sparingly released information implicating themselves or members of their agencies in facilitating and directly causing the untimely death of Dr. King. Although the Justice Department officially claims James Earl Ray assassinated MLK, a civil suit later determined that a Memphis cop was involved in a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader.

During a rainstorm on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers in Memphis lost their lives when the truck’s compactor accidentally triggered. On that same day, 22 black sewer workers were sent home without pay while their white coworkers received compensation. Less than two weeks later, over a thousand black sanitation workers went on strike wearing placards reading, “I AM A MAN.”

On March 18, 1968, Dr. King spoke at a rally in Memphis promising to lead a march later in the month supporting the striking sanitation workers. According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a black civil rights group named the Invaders sabotaged the March 28 demonstration by distributing hundreds of two by two sticks attached to placards into the hands of impressionable black children caught breaking store windows. The Invaders allegedly incited violence against Dr. King’s orders of peaceful resistance.

Because of the violence perpetrated during the March 28 demonstration, the city of Memphis filed a formal complaint against Dr. King and his associates within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). On the last day of his life, Dr. King spent most of his time with Dr. Ralph Abernathy of the SCLC. While Rev. Andrew “Andy” Young of the SCLC had convinced U.S. District Court Judge Bailey Brown to allow Dr. King to organize a peaceful march scheduled for April 8, Dr. King was preparing for dinner with Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. King’s Memphis PD security detail had been withdrawn, a black Memphis PD detective posted near the Lorraine Motel had been removed, and two black firemen in a station near the Lorraine Motel were transferred shortly before the assassination. Former Memphis PD Detective Jerry Williams had been assigned to Dr. King’s security detail twice before his final visit in 1968. Det. Williams asserted on Dr. King’s final visit that no black officers had been assigned to his security detail. The day before Dr. King’s death, Inspector Don H. Smith requested to remove his detail. The request was granted.

Accounts differ regarding Dr. King’s final words. According to FBI documents, Dr. King was discussing the weather with his chauffeur, Solomon Jones Jr., when the fatal shot struck. Rev. Jesse Jackson instead recalls Dr. King chastising him for not wearing a tie. Dr. King then turned to musician Ben Branch, who was standing beside Jackson, and said, “Make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord.’ Play it real pretty.” According to Jackson, those were his final words.

Since revealing its illegal COINTELPRO harassment of Dr. King and the existence of at least 5 paid informants who reported to their Memphis Field Office, the FBI also disclosed that Dr. King’s trusted friend and renowned photographer, Ernest Withers, had been secretly working as an FBI informant. In addition to the FBI informants, a black undercover Memphis PD officer named Marrell McCollough had infiltrated the Invaders in 1968. McCollough stood in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel on the night Dr. King died. He claimed to have been the first person to reach the body.

Although the Invaders had been removed from the Lorraine Motel a few hours earlier, undercover MPD officer Marrell McCollough remained on the premises until Dr. King’s death. McCollough claimed he spent the day shopping with Rev. James Bevel and Rev. James Orange of the SCLC. Standing in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel, McCollough witnessed Dr. King’s assassination then ran up the stairs to view the body. ABC News confirmed McCollough went on to join the CIA, and he later testified on March 12, 1978, to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

While recalling Dr. King’s final moments, Rev. Billy Kyles who was standing beside Dr. King on the balcony admitted decades later, “Only as I moved away so he could have a clear shot, the shot rang out.” Kyles has denied working as an FBI informant, even though he was accused of being a confidential Memphis PD informant.

In 1999, civil trial King v. Jowers determined former Memphis PD officer Loyd Jowers had been complicit in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King. In December 1993, Jowers appeared on ABC’s Prime Time Live confessing to his participation in Dr. King’s assassination. Jowers admitted he believed MPD Lt. Earl Clark fired the shot that killed Dr. King, not James Earl Ray. Although the U.S. government claims that Jowers fabricated his allegations, they have also admitted responsibility in attempting to ruin Dr. King’s marriage and persuading him to commit suicide.

Read more -

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi-memphis-polices-admitted-involvement-assassination-mlk/

Saturday, 16 January 2016

Counterfeiters Perplexed By Canada's Plastic Money -

Canada's plastic money is stumping counterfeiters. The RCMP estimate the number of fake bills passed on to retailers in 2015 dropped by 74 per cent compared with the previous year.

That doesn't mean people have given up trying to copy Canada's banknotes — it's just that even their best attempts to make fake cash are falling well short.

Regina Police Const. Scott Wolfe hasn't seen much counterfeit currency since the Bank of Canada introduced polymer money four years ago, but he did have a case last fall.

"When we first touched the bill you could tell it wasn't the polymer feel. It was paper. We could see they had cut out the security window from a real $5 bill and pasted it to a $50 and $100 bill," said Wolfe.

The face in the hologram didn't match the face on the bill and the edges were uneven. Even so, the money was successfully passed on to retailers, perhaps in a dimly lit bar or sandwiched between two authentic notes.

Wolfe said people passing counterfeit bills often pay for an inexpensive item with a high-value bill in order to get lots of change in authentic currency.

Read more -

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/01/13/counterfeiters-perplexed-by-canada-s-plastic-money_n_8975634.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business&ir=Canada+Business

Friday, 15 January 2016

French drug trial leaves one brain dead and five critically ill -

The French health minister, Marisol Touraine, said 90 people in total
had taken part in the trial and received some dosage of the drug;
others had taken a placebo. All trials on the drug have been suspended
and all volunteers who have taken part in the trial are being called
back.

The ministry said the test was carried out by the Biotrial clinic for
Bial, which “specialised in carrying out clinical trials”.

The trial was intended to test for side-effects of the new drug but
all trials at the clinic have been suspended and the French state
prosecutor has opened an inquiry.

Touraine said the drug was a so-called FAAH inhibitor meant to act on
the body’s endocannabinoid system, which deals with pain. Earlier
reports suggested that the drug contained cannabinoids, an active
ingredient found in cannabis plants, but the minister said it did not
contain the drug or any derivatives of it.

Touraine said the study was a phase one clinical trial, in which
healthy volunteers take the medication to “evaluate the safety of its
use, tolerance and pharmacological profile of the molecule”.

Medical trials typically have three phases to assess a new drug or
device for safety and effectiveness. Phase one entails a small group
of volunteers and focuses only on safety. Phase two and three are
progressively larger trials to assess the drug’s effectiveness,
although safety remains paramount.

Testing had already been carried out on animals, including
chimpanzees, starting in July, Touraine said.

Bial said it was committed to ensuring the wellbeing of test
participants and was working with authorities to discover the cause of
the injuries, adding that the clinical trial had been approved by
French regulators.

Every year, thousands of volunteers, often students looking to make
extra money, take part in such trials. Mishaps are relatively rare,
but in 2006 six men were treated for organ failure in London after
taking part in a clinical trial into a drug developed to fight
auto-immune disease and leukaemia.

The men now apparently have a higher risk of cancer and autoimmune
diseases tied to their exposure to the experimental drug.

Dr Ben Whalley, a neuropharmacology professor at Britain’s University
of Reading, said standardised regulations for clinical trials were
“largely the same” throughout Europe. “However, like any safeguard,
these minimise risk rather than abolish it,” Whalley said. “There is
an inherent risk in exposing people to any new compound.”

Read more -
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/french-drug-trial-one-person-in-coma-and-five-critically-ill